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Shirley Fredette was “tough as nails” and hoped that she would recover from an attack in a
parking lot, her son said.

A year and a day after the assault, the 82-year-old grandmother died, and now her family wants
her attacker to be charged with murder.

William R. Jenkins, 25, is serving a 14-year sentence after pleading guilty in June to
aggravated robbery and felonious assault.

Columbus police homicide Sgt. Steven Little said detectives will meet with the Franklin County
prosecutor’s office to discuss a potential charge of aggravated murder.

“As long as you can prove (the victim) died as a result of the injuries sustained in the first
incident, then we can turn around and charge (the suspect) with murder,” Little said.

Fredette, then 81, was leaving the Georgesville Square Kroger on the Far West Side on Sept. 4,
2012, when she was knocked to the ground and her purse stolen. Her skull was fractured.

She spent the past year shuttling between hospitals and nursing homes, David Fredette, her son,
said. Healthy and independent before the attack, she suffered five cerebral hemorrhages, brain-stem
bleeding and a stroke afterward.

She died on Sept. 5.

“The doctors were quite surprised that she made it as long as she did,” Fredette said. “A
20-year-old would have had trouble overcoming what she had.”

At first, he said, he and his brother and sister were prepared to put the ordeal behind them.
Jenkins is serving his sentence in the Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell. An accomplice,
Kaitlin T. Guy, 25, was sentenced to five years of probation in exchange for guilty pleas to two
counts of robbery.

Family members changed their minds when they found that an autopsy was required in cases of
homicide.

“There was no way to get out of that,” he said. Because of that “final injustice ... at his
hands, we’re going to go back and follow through as we should.”

Franklin County Coroner Jan Gorniak has not yet made a final ruling in the death.

Prosecutor Ron O’Brien said his office will wait for the autopsy results before making a
decision on additional charges. One thing he will consider is the sentence Jenkins could receive
for a murder conviction, compared with what he’s already serving.

Fredette said his mother never complained about what had happened. He and his family treasured
the past year.

“That’s probably the one thing, with all that she went through, that I’m most thankful for,” he
said. “We got to spend some good time with her.”